Hugh West is working on a study of the intellectual/cultural world of late-Eighteenth-century Europe, especially Germany, through the prism of the life of Georg Forster, 1754-94--a life embracing Catherine the Great's Russia, Cook's second voyage, various German cultural centers, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, revolutionary Mainz, and Paris under the Terror. Various aspects of that study have been published as articles and essays.

He has also devoted much of his career to academic administration, having been over the years (all at the University of Richmond) Coordinator of the Program for the Enhancement of Teaching Effectiveness, Director of the Graduate School, Coordinator of the Core Course, and Chair of the History Department.